This post is part of a series, though it need not be read in whole or in order. You can read the first post here. You can find the rest of the posts here.
The work of the Book, the Bell, and the Blade is a work of becoming. You begin where you are, and you work your way forward.
The tools, not knowing where they come from, may need to be cleansed. Do this in the traditions from which you come, but note that none of these tools will thank you for being exposed to salt water. Turn, perhaps, to cinnamon or smoke or sound or song.
In this same vein, as a part of the daily ritual, you will cleanse yourself with cinnamon or smoke or song. But we will come to that in due time.
Neither you nor your tools need be consecrated to the work in order to begin it. Lay the book and bell and blade and whatever else you bring upon whatever you wish to use as your altar. Then announce yourself to the world and begin.
You may begin by formally dedicating yourself, if you so choose. Speak your name aloud, and your intention. Consecrate yourself with holy oil and the smoke of frankincense. But then begin, immediately. Do not wait.
You may then consecrate your tools, as you wish, according to the traditions that raised you. Or they, the knife in particular, may already be consecrated when you begin. But this is not important to the work. Your tools and their spirits will grow, be shaped, and awakened, by the work, itself, just as you will be.
If it is important to you to consecrate all your tools at the very beginning and yet lack for words, I offer you these, based on my own. Turn to the weirdest and most hypercosmic deity of your pantheon, and pray to them as you will later pray over your offerings:
“Hail unto you o Baphomet, I pray you: bless and consecrate [this book, this knife, this bell] that it may be fit for the work to come.”
For my own part, I finally consecrated my Book some months into the work, using the Solar consecration PGM IV. 1596-1715 (p. 68-9 in Betz), to empower all magic done with it.
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